This has happened to me 3 times in the past 2 months. I buy a guitar from a seller with good feedback, other listings etc.... Later that day I get the notification from Reverb that it is being shipped. 4 or 5 days later I check the tracking and it only shows that a UPS label has been created. I write the seller and ask if they have the tracking number and within an hour I get a full refund through Reverb with the stated reason being it was "lost by carrier". No messages from the sellers.

The refunds have all cleared my bank so I'm not out anything but I truly don't understand what the end game is. I guess it's possible it's a coincidence but it doesn't seem likely. Is it a UPS insurance scam? Has anyone else seen this?

Check their recent buyers and see if it smells like all the same person/bot. Aside from false goods or “disappearing” scams, using colluding buyers/sellers to launder stolen money or test credit cards is the most common kind of scam on 3-party web marketplaces. If that was true, you would be “noise” vs their intended “signal”.

Along similar lines, I "bought" a brand-new Ampeg cabinet for a price that was too good to be true from what was very likely a scam website, but I used my PayPal account so I could dispute it if actually turned out to be a scam. Lo and behold, it was a scam, or at least they never shipped anything a week later. PayPal refunded me instantly.

Laundering, or maybe hoping that you forgot about the purchase and they just keep the money, is my guess.

Purchased an item at a good price - item ships, them says its delivered but there’s no package?

Due diligence says i give it a few days before I freak out, but I can’t help but wonder. Truly we are all at the mercy of some dire machination aren’t we folks

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Sat Apr 15, 2023 5:10 pm Purchased an item at a good price - item ships, them says its delivered but there’s no package?

Due diligence says i give it a few days before I freak out, but I can’t help but wonder. Truly we are all at the mercy of some dire machination aren’t we folks

I had this happen recently but not from an individual seller. Mouser shipping through UPS, which I have an account with and get automatic emails when a package is out for delivery or has been delivered. I know the date the package is supposed to arrive, I am at home, I get an email saying it was delivered despite that no one rang the bell, went outside and nothing. I'm confident that no attempt was even made because I was home and one wouldnt just leave something here without ringing the bell, someone at UPS just scanned the label and tossed the package probably.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Sat Apr 15, 2023 5:10 pm Purchased an item at a good price - item ships, them says its delivered but there’s no package?

Due diligence says i give it a few days before I freak out, but I can’t help but wonder. Truly we are all at the mercy of some dire machination aren’t we folks

Give it a couple of business days. I’ve had this happen many times. Here is my experience from most likely to least likely:
1) they scanned it at the end of the day to stay off some delivery time report and it be delivered next day. This is usually UPS.
2) it was misdelivered by USPS and it’ll show up in a couple of days, either from the carrier or a kind neighbor.
3) it was misdelivered by USPS and you call about it saying it wasn’t delivered TO YOU. They don’t care because it is delivered. They look into it and find out where the delivery was scanned and either won’t tell you, or do tell you and expect you to follow up with that address about it. I can tell you if it is marked delivered they won’t honor the insurance. You’ll have to get a refund from the sender.

No neighbors have found a package so far - we’re in an HOA so they were are easy to get a hold of

Somebody from the post office called on a Sunday and said the package was scanned near my house while I was home on Saturday… but the package never made it to my door. They said it was left at the mailbox on my street but its a piece of gear that shouldn’t have been able to fit in there

I started a lost item case and marked the item as not received on ebay. Following up with USPS soon.

Moving slow and really hoping I don’t get burned on this. Of all the packages to mess up that was a real bad one

Ok, let’s see if this makes sense. Here’s the scam:

Seller lists fake gear on ebay/reverb -
Buyer (me) buys it, as they do
Seller buys a shipping label w/ tracking to the buyer’s address
Seller attaches that tracking label but changes the “physical address” (or address written out on the package) to a random house nearby. Not too close but not too far away
Seller ships a small empty box
Package arrives to area eventually, gets pretty close to the buyer’s house
Well meaning carrier sees that the address on the package is actually for a house around the corner
Carrier brings the package to the other house, scans package, drops it off
Unwitting house around the corner receives an empty box w/ their address printed on it, probably throws it away - at this point, they never came back into the picture
Tracking shows that the package was delivered to the buyer’s address, and you have to go over that fact every single time you talk to anyone

I knew something was up because I was at home waiting for the package when it didn’t show up. Alarm bells rang when the post office kept saying the package was left in the mail box and weighed 1 lb- which of course isn’t possible for the rack compressor I thought I was buying

At this point, its very hard to get a refund. People will just assume the package was correctly delivered to the buyer and then stolen, which would be the buyer’s liability if it were.

I was on the phone w/ USPS/ebay/paypal for over a month before I was able to get my money back

Your local USPS office is able to look at a scan of the package and see that the address on the label was changed. They are also able to see that the package was scanned outside of an address associated with the tracking number. The odds of them catching all of this when you first get a hold of them are probably not great.

The people who answer the phone at the 1-800 USPS number can only see the same tracking info you see, but will hopefully escalate and put you into contact with someone at your local post office. They might try to get you to file a claim, which you can’t do without the seller’s shipping address, so good luck with that.

Paypal will tell you they are aware of the scam and that all you need is a document or e-mail from the post office saying that the package was delivered to the wrong address. That is nearly impossible to get.

As much as a pain in the ass all of that is, ebay is probably the worst. Their fraud line is some kind of insane phone loop that I was never able to get a hold of anyone with.

Eventually my refund just magically appeared from paypal - I was still trying to get written confirmation from USPS to give to them. the local post office kept saying that the tracking # would show that the box was misdelivered so that I could get a refund, but it never did.

Never again!!! In this case the price was pretty good but wasn’t an insane deal or anything. The seller did have 0 feedback, but I figured that worst case scenario I could easily get a refund from paypal. Definitely not so

If Paypal just refunded you I'd guess the seller must have had several other disputes at the same time and maybe they just went ahead and did it?

tallchris wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 3:10 pm If Paypal just refunded you I'd guess the seller must have had several other disputes at the same time and maybe they just went ahead and did it?

The Paypal guy I spoke to after it was refunded says that they reach out to USPS directly for stuff like this. He hinted that the first PP guy who asked me to get an e-mail from USPS had misunderstood, so I’m not sure how much more complicated that made it. USPS definitely had a ton of notes connected to the tracking from my calling, it was just kind of a chore to get them to read them when I called.

I don’t think the USPS wanted to accept liability for the misdirection on the seller’s part which would be understandable if it didn’t almost cost me $900 because someone didn’t read